At least 10 killings in Mexico appear to be linked to arrests of cartel leaders in the US

The killing of at least 10 people in the northern Mexican state of Sinaloa appears to be linked to infighting within the largest drug cartel there, confirming fears of repercussions following the arrest of two top cartel leaders on July 25.

Last month, Joaquin Guzman Lopeza capo of a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel – the Chapitos or “Little Chapos”, the sons of captured cartel leader Joaquin “The Chapo” Guzmán – turned himself in to US authorities. He reportedly kidnapped the leader of the rival faction, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambadaforce him to board the same flight to El Paso and turn him in there.

Mexican authorities are caught in the middle of the coming storm: They were not involved in the July 25 arrest, but they do not want to take the opportunity to crack down on the Sinaloa cartel. The cartel is falling apart, and what is at stake is who will take over Zambada’s faction now that he is in a U.S. prison.

To paraphrase a famous Mexican corrido song, “Smuggling and betrayal,” the combination of the two always leads to murder.

Analysts say the government is reluctant to get involved because both sides in the Sinaloa cartel’s internal conflict have damaging information about officials that they could release at any time. So they have limited themselves to increasingly desperate appeals for both sides not to fight among themselves.

On Monday, Sinaloa state Governor Rubén Rocha acknowledged that four killings on Friday and six killings on Saturday were linked to the dispute between warring factions of the cartel.

“These are related to the drug cartels … and they can be linked to the situation that arose after the arrests of July 25,” Governor Rocha said. “What I want is peace, and I have to ask for it from whoever, from the violent.”

This combination of images provided by the U.S. State Department shows Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a historic leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel (left), and Joaquín Guzmán López, a son of another notorious cartel leader, after they were arrested by U.S. authorities in Texas, the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday, July 25, 2024.

/AP

That was an echo of an earlier statement by President Andrés Manuel López Obradorwho acknowledged that two other killings were linked to the conflict.

“We don’t want the situation in Sinaloa to deteriorate,” López Obrador said. “It has remained stable in terms of violence. That doesn’t mean there was no violence, but there was no confrontation, no fighting between groups.”

“Public opinion is bombing”

That kind of peace — where drug cartels are allowed to smuggle, deal and extort, but not cause too much violence — is something the president has praised in the past. Eradicating the cartels, he says, is a policy that has been imposed on Mexico by the United States in the past, and one he disagrees with.

But Mexican security analyst David Saucedo said authorities are reluctant to intervene for another reason: Zambada, the jailed drug lord, appears willing to use the damaging insider knowledge he has about corrupt Mexican politicians to pressure them.

Zambada has already shown that he is willing to do so. In a prison letterZambada gave a version of the murder of Hector Cuén – a political rival of Governor Rocha who was killed on the same day Zambada was kidnapped – and blamed it on the Chapitos faction.

Rocha and prosecutors claimed that Cuén was killed in a random, unrelated gas station robbery, and released security camera footage confirming that. But federal prosecutors later said the governor’s version was inaccurate and likely fake.

Zambada apparently has more information he can release if tempers flare in Sinaloa and his sons can’t take over his part of the business: the names of politicians, police officers and military personnel he has bribed.

“It seems to me that Mayo Zambada’s media strategy is aimed at ensuring an orderly transition in the organization that he commands,” Saucedo said. “With these (media) hand grenades, these public opinion bombs, Zambada is trying to ensure that federal authorities do not try to interfere with the leadership succession in his organization.”

If that is the goal — to keep order in Sinaloa so that leadership of the drug sector can be passed from one generation to the next and politicians are not publicly exposed for collaborating with drug cartels — then the latest killings do not bode well for that strategy.

At least two of the men killed last week – they were tortured, shot and found with their heads wrapped in duct tape – were close associates of Zambada.

The Chapitos and their cartel partners used corkscrews, electrocution and hot peppers to torture their rivals while some of their victims were “fed dead or alive to tigers,” according to an indictment unsealed by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Mexican Army soldiers patrol a highway in military vehicles as part of a military operation to increase security after the wave of violence in the city of Culiacan, in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, on August 19, 2024.

IVAN MEDINA/AFP via Getty Images

But as usual, it is difficult to determine which murder or violent act was committed by which cartel faction, and why.

For example, someone began methodically destroying the lavish family tomb of a prominent Sinaloa cartel clan a few days after the arrests of the two capos on July 25. They used bulldozers and excavators to break open the mausoleum’s walls and excavate the crypts.

The clan whose grandfather and uncle’s bodies lie in the grave (both bodies were stolen) had previously had violent conflicts with both the Chapitos and Zambada factions.

In his letter from prison, Zambada called on the governments of the United States and Mexico to be “transparent” about his kidnapping, subsequent disappearance and death.

“I also call on the people of Sinaloa to exercise restraint and maintain peace in our state,” Zambada wrote. “Nothing can be solved by violence. We have been down that road before, and everyone loses.”

If there is one obvious casualty that needs to be buried in the conflict, it is the idea that the Sinaloa cartel was once a monolithic, hierarchical gang with a single leader at the top. As the War of the Luxurious Tombs in Culiacán, the state capital, shows, the cartel has always been a loose alliance of drug-trafficking clans trying to outdo each other, even in death.

El Chapo, the founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, is serving a life sentence in a maximum-security prison in Colorado after he… convicted in 2019 for drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons-related crimes, among other things.

Last year, El Chapo sent an “SOS” message to Mexican President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, claiming he has been the victim of “psychological abuse” in prison.